FNLA

The National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) is a Christian democratic and conservative political party in Angola, founded in 1961. The FNLA had its roots in the United People of Northern Angola (UPNA) movement, which had been founded in 1954 by Bakongo separatists, and it waged guerrilla warfare against the Portuguese colonial government in conjunction with UNITA and the MPLA. US president John F. Kennedy began funding the FNLA that year, hoping that the party that would dominate a post-colonial Angola would be a sympathetic one, not an Eastern Bloc-aligned regime like the Marxist MPLA. Algeria, Tunisia, West Germany, Ghana, Israel, France, Romania, China, South Africa, the United States, Zaire, and Liberia all supported the FNLA, and Israel trained FNLA fighters from 1963 to 1969. The FNLA took part in inter-rebel conflicts during the Angolan War of Independence, fighting against the rival MPLA party, and it would be one of the major right-wing factions during the Angolan Civil War of 1975-2002. The FNLA was supported by the USA during the civil war, but its failure to capture Luanda and its demise as a fighting force in 1976 led to the USA switching its support to UNITA. In 1992, the FNLA became a political party, and it held 2/220 National Assembly seats in 2017.